Great Outdoors Map Creation Contest

To celebrate the release of America’s Army: Proving Grounds and the newly updated Mission Editor we are holding the Great Outdoors Map Creation Contest! Contestants will have approximately three months to create a map following the ‘Great Outdoors’ theme. At the end of the contest period we will be selecting three winners whose maps will be featured in the game.

What is the deadline for entry?
There are two dates you should know: Monday, December 14, 2015 and Monday, February 1, 2016.

December 14th will be a preview event that we hold halfway through the competition. This is a time for the community and developers to see what you have up to this point and to provide feedback. Think of this as an Alpha Test for your map. The goal is to provide you with useful feedback while you still have enough time to make changes. This deadline is OPTIONAL. You can still enter the contest if you don’t submit anything by this deadline, but that means you will lose a huge opportunity for feedback from the community.

February 1st is the deadline for submissions in to the competition. Whatever is submitted to the workshop on this date is what will be judged. Deadlines for both of these dates (Dec 14 and Feb 1) are 9am CST.

What do I get if I win?
We will take your map and incorporate it in to the full game! We will polish up your map including: addressing collision and anchoring issues, fixing bugs, providing proper minimaps, updating ambient audio (if necessary) and updating art assets for key areas of the map (if necessary). Once we have completed this polish pass we will make you map official by added it in to the game and placing it in the default map rotation.

How will the three winners be determined?
Winners will be selected by the development team. We will be judging maps on the following criteria.

Theme: Only maps which meet the Great Outdoors theme will be considered for this contest. To meet this theme, the map must place a focus on outdoor environments and engagements. While buildings ARE allowed, they should not make up a majority of key gameplay areas. If we feel your map is not meeting this criteria, we will provide that feedback after as part of our December 14th review, assuming you make a submission by that deadline.

Character: Does that map have characteristics, either in environment or gameplay, that make it stand out from the competition? A map with character that can be easily remembered will earn favor with the judges.

Fun: Is the map fun to play? At the end of the day, this is the goal all maps strive to meet. If the map isn’t enjoyable to play then it doesn’t have much chance to win.

Completeness: How close is the map to being shippable? We are looking for maps that just need a bit of polish before we release them. The closer you can get your map to shippable quality the more favorably it will be viewed by the judges.

So, to boil it down, we are looking for fun maps that are on theme. Maps meeting that criteria with strong character and solid construction have a great chance at winning this competition.

How do I get the map creation tools?
The America’s Army: Proving Grounds Editor can be downloaded as DLC for the game through Steam.

How do I submit my map to the competition?
Publish your map to Steam and then post the url to your map’s workshop page here: Map Submission Thread

Tell me more about this December 14th deadline…
All maps that have been submitted (Map Submission Thread) by 9am CST on December 14th will be added to a collection. That map collection will then be run on a number of official servers for a week. During this time, players can play your maps and provide feedback either through your map’s Workshop page or though provided feedback areas on the forums.

Eligibility
Anyone who is not a developer at Army Game Studio is eligible for this contest.

Originality
All contest entries must be original works by the person submitting the entry. Recreations of existing maps (from our games or others) will not be accepted.

*Map times need to conform to standard Official map play times, 3 minutes for BDX and 4 for FLO.

Alright, one more question !!!
Outdoors maps is like Slums, Coldfront and intercept ? I'm from Brazil and i don't understand your terms very well, sorry. I really don't want to waste my time doing something wrong

Alright, one more question !!!
Outdoors maps is like Slums, Coldfront and intercept ? I'm from Brazil and i don't understand your terms very well, sorry. I really don't want to waste my time doing something wrong

Generally, when people talk about an "Outdoor" map they are talking about more of a terrain based map.

Of those three, Intercept would probably be the closest, though I suppose you could make the argument that Cold Front fits within the requirements as well. Cold Front has a lot of interior spaces, but at least the objectives are out in the open. Slums has a lot of open spaces, but the majority of the objectives are focused on interiors.

If you Google Image Search 'Great Outdoors' (I did for you) you likely won't find anything resembling those three maps.

When hearing this theme, I think of maps where the focus is on the terrain and "natural" environments. Here's one map from a few years back for inspiration:

Players traipse through water in the middle and, above, a stone arch offers a higher route. At each end of the map, players fight from behind sparse tree cover. The entire map is either hills or cliffs and careful maneuvering is a big deal.

Although its a FLO map, it's better suited for BDX. I still have work to do to that map. But I did mention that earlier about maybe fixing it up and entering the contest. However, I'm staying out of all AAPG Map Contests, this and the ones to come in the future. Including AA2/3 Map Contest.